


Hold your devil by his spoke

by dwellingondreams



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Ableism, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Clegane Hall (ASoIaF), Cooking, Domestic, Female Character of Color, Gardens & Gardening, Gen, Gregor Dies Early, Implied/Referenced Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Internalized Misogyny, Merchant Class, Original Character(s), POV Female Character, Period Typical Attitudes, Period-Typical Underage, Pre-A Game of Thrones, Pre-Canon, Recovery, Robert's Rebellion, Teenagers, Trauma, Wine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 00:13:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 13,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27185018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dwellingondreams/pseuds/dwellingondreams
Summary: "All of this can be broken/All of this can be broken/Hold your devil by his spoke and spin him to the ground." - Laura Marling, 'Devil's Spoke'.Her dress is old and faded red. Still a good color. Lucky. Red’s always felt lucky, like the wine. It brings out the almond tone of her skin, the dark brown of her eyes, the glossy black of her hair. She smooths down her skirt as she steps out into the twilight, only to smell something foul on the air, and it’s not the dead boar slung over the back of Gregor’s saddle. He isn’t in the saddle. He’s being dragged across the loose dirt of the yard by four of his men, and even they are faltering to move him. Gored, she realizes. She can smell his intestines from here.(In the aftermath of Ser Gregor Clegane's untimely death, his brother and widow forge an unlikely friendship.)
Relationships: Gregor Clegane & Original Character(s), Gregor Clegane & Sandor Clegane, Sandor Clegane & Original Character(s), Sandor Clegane & Original Female Character(s)
Comments: 37
Kudos: 144





	Hold your devil by his spoke

**Author's Note:**

> This was inspired by a prompt from Quiet Shadow on tumblr!

She is considering what wine to use on the chicken when the horn sounds. Her mother taught her that a dry red was best for cooking, but there are several different variations from the Arbor to consider. Inside the dusty cellar beneath the small kitchen, Mira debates, wrapping her arms under her chest as she shifts, restless, from foot to foot. 

Her husband’s hall is not a grand nor fine one. It was constructed less than fifty years before. Two small, stout towers jutting out of the square jaw of a keep like canines. An ugly, crude construction done for as little coin as possible, as quickly as possible. Some of the roofs leak in the winter, there’s always a draft, one of the gates is in dire need of repair. 

A garrison of sixty men, maximum, and a household of barely a hundred. No steward, no castellan, no real cook, a dozen maids in a good year, one drunken maester. No septon, no sept. A single prayer room at the top of one tower, now shuttered and closed. The village sept, barely more than a shack, will have to do. The village itself- minuscule. There is one road, singular. Most of the houses are little more than thatched roof cottages. 

The hunting is decent, though. There’s always fair game in the lightly wooded foothills of the mountains. Always a steady supply of venison and boar. 

She’s wasting time. The cool, stuffy, dark surroundings of the cellar are a comfort. She selects the bottle from the rack. An Arbor red, not the best one could drink, but young enough- she checks the age on the label- and fruity enough- she uncorks it and takes a small sip, swirling it under her tongue- to bring out good flavoring. Mira tucks the bottle carefully under her arm, a force of habit from a childhood where breaking the product meant a leather strap breaking loose across your back and arse, and climbs up the stone steps and back up into the kitchen.

Many women wed into landed knights have no need to cook or do anything other than overlook the menu once in a while, to make sure all is running smoothly. That is not the case here. Mira was taught to cook from a young age, albeit with assistance- her own mother has help in the kitchens and around the house in Oldtown, and had expected all her daughters would fare similarly. Enough coin for servants, yes, but not enough coin to avoid getting your own hands dirty. Mira doesn’t mind. She likes cooking. 

Lenore is pouring the fat from the pan, catching it in another dish to use to fry the onions and peppers. Mira steps back into place without comment; she has an, if not easy, at least innate and understood camaraderie with most of the household. She adds the rosemary and a splash of the wine, adjusting her position over the cooking fire as she dumps in the carrots and bay leaves chopped up by Sam. Lenore puts the chicken back in, and Mira rotates, slowly, using her left wrist for the bulk of it. Her right has always been stiff and unwieldy since the broken bones healed. Sometimes it wakes her up in the middle of the night, phantom pains. 

The horn sounds again. They’re just outside the gates now, the hunting party. Him and six or so men. Young and new, most of them. Plenty of the men he marched to King’s Landing with didn’t return. She’s glad. She hopes the worst of them are dead in unmarked graves or lying in a puddle of their own sick in some alehouse. She hopes they never come back. Gregor attracts two kinds of men; cravens and children. The cravens need someone bigger and badder to justify their own misdeeds. They need a shield to cower behind. The children need a father, a brother, a god, anything to worship. The children are easier to manage, less sure of themselves, eager to please. Yes, Ser. Yes, Mistress. But she’s never had any trouble from most of them. They know better, just like how a dog knows better than to take a bigger dog’s bone. 

The chicken will be done soon. The bread is ready. If they didn’t catch the boar, she has sausages and beef stew; Mira checks it quickly, and nods approvingly as Jonna adds the lemon zest; she can taste the pulp in the air. She adds a dash of red wine to that, too. More than a dash. Good meals are important. Men eat well, they’re tired, they go to bed. You clear the table, you go to bed. Simple. Repeat. They eat enough, they don’t get half as drunk. Sated. You want them sated. No matter how big or brutal a man is, he eats well, he’s in a decent mood so long as you don’t muck it up while serving him. 

The table’s already set, she always does that before they even start cooking, so it’s always ready for people to sit. She can hear the gate opening, the dogs barking, the horses whinnying. There’s still a half-light outside, a golden summer’s dusk. The Citadel announced it just as he returned from war, her husband. A glorious new season. It didn’t feel that way to her. She’ll be wed a year come two more turns of the moon. It feels like much longer. Her wrist clicks when she rotates it. Rosie takes over the chicken. Mira removes her stained smock and hangs it on a wooden peg by the doorway, arranges her dark hair. 

Her mother is Dornish, grew up on a vineyard alongside the Torrentine, swears she could see Starfall on a good day, paradise. The real paradise was the vineyard, as far as Mira is concerned. Warm dirt under her feet and her siblings laughing as they raced under trellises and flowering trees. River valley people, her mother’s. Sandy Dornishmen. Brown, burnished skin, thick black hair, heavy eyebrows and hooked noses, her mother’s family. Beautiful, Mira thinks. Has always thought. She’s a little lighter brown, for her father is Oldtown born and bred, blonde-haired and blue-eyed and pasty red in the sun, but not by much. 

She’s thought of writing to her mother's father, the old man, her grandad, with his warm, seamed hands and his dark kind eyes.

In her fantasies, he could sail a skiff upriver to Horn Hill, take the Rose Road to Highgarden, forge north into the Westerlands and come take her away. Then she thinks about her husband. How he’d track her down with his men, all the way down the Torrentine. All the way to the vineyard, the ancient stone house built into the bluffs overlooking the river, with its comforting plum colored doors. Pictures the fields ablaze, the house sacked and looted, the plum doors off their hinges, her grandmother’s flower garden in ruins, her cousins screaming. She’s never sent the letter, even in her dreams. She’s written her mother five times since her wedding, received two long, apologetic replies. 

They’re always on the move, merchants. City to city, town to town, inn to inn, plying their wares. She knows it well; it was her childhood. Wagons and wheelhouses and barges and bridges. Handing out compliments and free samples to the rich, visiting septries with their best casks, arguments with guild representatives and long debates over pricing and profits. Up and down the coast and back again. Oldtown to Lannisport and back again. They’ve sold to Lannisters, Crakehalls, Oakhearts, Tyrells and Tarlys. Mullendores and Hightowers and Bulwers. Daynes and Blackmonts. 

Her dress is old and faded red. Still a good color. Lucky. Red’s always felt lucky, like the wine. It brings out the almond tone of her skin, the dark brown of her eyes, the glossy black of her hair. She smooths down her skirt as she steps out into the twilight, only to smell something foul on the air, and it’s not the dead boar slung over the back of Gregor’s saddle. He isn’t in the saddle. He’s being dragged across the loose dirt of the yard by four of his men, and even they are faltering to move him. Gored, she realizes. She can smell his intestines from here. There’s no stitching that up. He’ll be dead by midnight, if not sooner. 

A spark of joy deep in the hollow of her throat, preceding the roar, “MAESTER!”

Andon’s not drunk, which is an improvement. Only worked his way through half his usual pre-dinner cup. He calls for a stretcher, but it’s obvious they’re not moving him in any further than the hall. There’s no getting a man of Gregor’s size up a narrow stairwell while he’s prone on a stretcher. They barely get him through the doorway as it is. 

“Clear the table!” she shouts, and someone does- cups and utensils and empty dishes clatter to the dusty floor, some shattering instantly. His girth covers the stretch of the table; she imagines she hears it groaning under his weight. Gregor’s not fat. There’s no fat to him. What he is is a slab of meat pounded into muscle and sinew. Seventeen and he looks like he could be twenty five, no trace of babyish pudge or dimples, not even when he smiles. She doesn’t like to recall the few times she’s seen him smile. 

Andon is cursing and unraveling bandages and calling for hot water. Mira runs to fetch a kettle. The kitchen crew stands in a huddled clump, staring at her with wild, terrified eyes. Gregor has come back injured before, and it’s never been good for anyone once he was back on his feet. He has headaches, frequently, bad enough that he has to lie down in the dark for hours on end. Quiet. That’s what Gregor likes when his head hurts. Quiet. Well, it is quiet now. You could hear a pin drop in the kitchens, over the crackle of the cooking fires.

“Finish preparing the food,” Mira says, as she heaves up a kettle. “And set it out in the courtyard. Let the men come eat. Maester doesn’t want them underfoot.”

A few jerky nods, and then she’s gone. She sits on an old bench, listening to Gregor groan and hiss and curse while Andon does his best to at least quell the bleeding. There’s no stitching that up, she thinks, again, reassuring herself, or warning herself. He will die. Gregor has survived plenty of things that should and could have killed him; blows to the head, falls from a horse, collapsing rubble. But there is no escaping this. The dead boar is dragged into the kitchens, leaving its own miniature trail of gore behind, attracting flies on the dirty floor. She just mopped with Rosie this morning. She’ll need to mop all over again tomorrow. 

Finally Andon pulls her away by the elbow. He wouldn’t dare such familiarity with a lady, but Mira is not a lady. She’s obeyed as the mistress of the place, but there’s no innate obedience, no instinctive fear of the retribution that might come with offending with the wrong highborn. Her mother’s family owns their land and live off their vines and the meager rent paid to them by the workers who live on their land. Even so, it only exists by the tolerance of the lords. There’s few protections. One wrong move and it could be stripped from then in an instant, gobbled up by greedy neighbors. 

They don’t have titles beyond ‘master’ and ‘mistress’, they don’t have a sigil, they don’t have house words, they have no garrison beyond the hired guards, most of whom only work seasonally when there’s the highest risk of thieves or incursions onto their land, during the harvest. Lords ride through their fields on hunts, trampling vines underfoot, no one dares say a word. Her family name only means something in very specific circles. No Vintner has ever ridden into a town and put the fear of the gods into the people. They bow and scrape before the lords and ladies like all the rest.

The Cleganes were still a step above. Landed and knights. Titled. Ennobled. Her family is only as good as the current generation. Their family will always have these land and this keep, shitty as it is. A hundred landed knights might serve one lord’s family. The Cleganes serve the Lannisters. That was good enough for her father. The match was his proposal. Her grandparents were incensed he did not delay, wait to confer with them. It was arranged within a matter of days. How could he pass it up? When might he get the chance to marry a daughter into the nobility again?

“There’s no more I can do,” Andon tells her gruffly, the way one might speak to a daughter or niece, not a mistress. “I’ll give him milk of poppy, if he’ll take it. Hopefully he sleeps through it.”

‘It’ being his death. It’s curious in its way. Gregor survived the Sack, killed countless Targaryen men, hacked and stabbed and smashed his way through Maegor’s Holdfast, said to be impenetrable, ended a dynasty of three hundred years in a matter of moments, evaded any stabs in the back or throat from incensed royalists out for revenge, was commended and heralded in private, patted on the back and the head like any loyal young dog, and sent on his way, tail wagging, home with his loot. Only to be gored by a boar two weeks later. 

“Alright,” Mira says, staring up at Andon’s weathered old face and stained grey robes. “I understand.”

“You might sit with him. It’s a bad way to go.”

“Alright.” Her stomach is growling. She gets some chicken and fills a mug with stew, and sits down next to the table where her husband is dying, arranging her small feast on a cloth. Chicken grease runs down her fingers. 

She wonders if a man can be dying and still hungry, or if that’s lost to him now. His eyes are half-lidded, glassy. There’s nothing horrifying about Gregor’s looks beyond his sheer size. The ropes of his muscles, she supposes, are grotesque, but taken apart from his height and width, not that dreadful. His nose is big, hooked as her own is, but she supposes he likes it better on his own face. His eyes are a murky brownish grey like the water when you get out of the bath after several days of travel. His hair is close cropped, little more than dark stubble, and she doesn’t think he can grow a proper beard yet. 

Mira licks her fingers and sips her stew, watching him breathe, in and out, in and out, his chest rising and falling in exertion. For a little while she doesn’t even think he’s aware of her presence, especially after he gets his milk of poppy, which he takes like an infant takes a bottle, but as she’s finishing off her chicken leg he rasps, “Water,” so she pours some in the corner of his mouth, bent to her work.

She’d thought the pain, if not the fear of death, might quell the hate in his eyes. It’s still there. 

Mira has come to understand that for Gregor, hating is like breathing. He needs it to live. He can’t think of waking up one day and being content. Satisfied, maybe, for a little while. But it always passes. Most men need to eat and shit and piss and sleep. Gregor needs all that, and to hate. It’s got nothing to do with her or anyone else. It’s what he requires to live, this seething anger, all the time, every day, waiting to be awoken, a greedy, greedy beast. He likes being angry. And being angry suits him. People expect it of a man so big and brutal looking. And gods, does he like to give it to them.

He asks for more water three more times, over the next hour, then for wine. Mira goes and fetches the bottle from the kitchens, the dry, fruity red. Gives him a little of that. He swallows shakily, like an old woman, like one of her great aunts when she was faltering, then spits. A bloody globule lands on her wrist. “Not that,” he growls. “The good wine. You bitch. You know the kind I wanted.” He’s crying a little from the pain, she sees now. He may be big, but his voice still cracks like the boy he is. Size has nothing to do with it. He sounds like stone one instant, reedy the next. “Cunt. Get me a good bottle. Not this pisswater.”

On instinct, she obediently moves towards the kitchen, then stops. Considers. What will happen to her, if she refuses? He can’t move. He can’t even sit up. He will never walk again. He’s dying. He’s going to die, soon. What does she have to lose? She massages her clicky wrist, then rolls back her aching shoulders. One has his hand-print on it from two days past, when he nearly ground her face into the headboard. Those carved wooden dogs, barking and laughing at her. She hates those wooden dogs and that creaky old bed. 

Mira turns back around. Fifty bottles of her father’s best wines were part of her dowry. It’s not even been a full year yet, and he was gone these past four months. He hasn’t even begun to put a dent in them. Gregor drinks like a fish, but even he couldn’t manage that, and she knows he prefers rum and beer. Her father’s hoping to expand into brandy, too, but her granddad won’t hear about any contracts with the Tyroshi, no matter how good their pear brandy sells. He won’t change money with slavers. 

She sits back down on the bench, just out of reach of one of his massive fists. “Did you hear me,” he snarls, and she can tell it must be agony for him to speak like this, even with the pain dulled some by the poppy milk. “Get me. The good. Wine. Cunt.”

Mira looks at him, really looks at him, as she has not had the chance to do so since their wedding, since the final moments before she passed over from her father to him. Gregor takes direct eye contact as a challenge, and she learned quickly always to lower her eyes and address the floor, not him. She raises the bottle, only a quarter full, at this point, to her lips. 

He exhales a furious breath. 

Mira closes her eyes, tilts her head back, and drinks. It’s the sweetest taste she’s ever felt on her tongue. Every swallow makes her thirstier. She doesn’t need to breathe at all. She drinks until there’s not a drop left, then lowers the bottle, smiling woozily at him. She hasn’t smiled at him since their wedding day, either. His fists grasps weakly at the air. 

“Get me the good wine, cunt,” Mira echoes back at him, not quite mocking but appreciative, almost, of how the words feel on her tongue, stinging from the wine. She giggles, then snorts and hiccups. Cunt. The only part of a woman he likes, and it’s all he can think to call them. Cunt. Cunny. Country matters. In this fair country, a maiden did dwell- she hurls the empty bottle at the wall behind him. He’s done that plenty of times to her, only hasn’t meant to miss, most of them. His last wife died after she had a bad fall down the stairs. Lenore warned her that falls down stairs don’t usually crush your windpipe until your eyes bulge in your skill. 

It shatters, the glass tinkling to the floor like the chimes that hang outside the house on the Torrentine, overlooking the vineyard and the river far below. He flinches as if every tinkle is a wasp’s sting. He flinches.

She stands up, giddy and almost delirious, as if she’d polished off some of his poppy milk herself. “Get me the good wine,” she repeats, smiling at him. 

His face has gone slack. 

She feels another involuntary, hysterical giggle. He’s not breathing anymore. His last action was to flinch in fear of his wife, a plump brown-skinned girl with a big nose and dark eyes and black hair, who stands but five foot seven, who does not even come up to his shoulder. He flinched in fear. It had to be fear. She has to believe it was fear. 

She takes another daring step closer, within reach, waiting for the monster to jerk awake, to grab her in his hands and tear her head off with his teeth, like the giants in her mother’s stories. 

He plucked her up and he- gobbled- her- down- in- one- gulp-

A bold fly has landed on his neck, lapping up his sweat. That fly is her most beloved creature in the entire world. She could sing to it. Propose marriage. 

She wrings her shaking hands together, sobs aloud, and stumbles up to her room as the wine settles in. 

She’s half convinced herself it was all a dream when she wakes at dawn, but she’s not sore the way she usually is, and she’s still wearing the red dress from the day before. She puts on one of her oldest, plainest gowns, a dark brown one that is slightly tight in the chest and shoulders, from before she was a woman wed, and almost timidly creeps back downstairs. Gregor’s hounds have never dared come inside before, but now they skulk about the darkened hall, sniffing at his corpse, licking at his stiff, frozen hands and waxen face. 

It should be horrifying; the monster’s body laid out in the dark. It is. She presses herself up against the doorway, her fist practically in her mouth to hold back a cry- of shock, of relief. It wasn’t a dream. It’s real. He’s real. He’s really dead. She half expected him to piece himself back together overnight, like one of her older sister’s scary stories. The Grave Knight. 

His grave. They have to bury him. They have to hold a funeral. The villagers must know, by now, the news cannot have been contained to this small keep. She would not be surprised if they were celebrating with the rising of the sun. Clegane Keep belongs to Gregor’s brother, now. Mira has never met the man. Boy. He cannot be any older than her, fourteen or fifteen, she’d wager. He serves under the Lannisters as well, but he is no knight, or even a squire, as far as she knows. Her father had hoped to make her little brother Damon a squire of Gregor’s in time. Gregor was knighted by Prince Rhaegar himself, the highest of honors. But Damon was only nine when Mira was wed, and her mother begged her father to let him have a few more years at home.

The smell in the hall is foul, even with all the doors flung open. Gregor’s men are sleeping off their drink, and the ones she does manage to rouse are in a foul temper, and disinclined to take orders from his widow. She keeps a stone face, holds her tongue, and ignores their dark looks. She can’t let her guard down now. Gregor kept his men in line through their collective terror of him. Without him, they’ll be unruly, disorganized, and looking for entertainment. Some will desert, likely join up with the nearest powerful house, the Swyfts, but many will stay, unwilling to risk life on the road as free riders, unwilling to give up a comfortable spot here, made all the more enticing with Gregor dead and his widow available to them. 

Mira is well-liked in the village; she visits a few times a week, spends time with the elders and the young septon, knows the names of their children and has set foot in their homes. If it comes down to it, she may be able to rally some of the fighting men there to defend her. Gregor’s men may be unwilling to step too far out of line if she can present a strong front and play the part of the untouchable highborn lady, not the merchant’s daughter they all know she is. But it won’t last. 

She has to notify the brother. He'll be in a fury if it seems like she deliberately delayed news of Gregor’s death, and it may be he’s a more reasonable sort. She just needs him not to throw her out immediately. The law prohibits him from doing such, but no law ever stopped Gregor, and no Lannister is going to come running down from the Rock to set things right, even if she writes to complain that she is ill-treated by her dead husband’s brother.

Either the brother will want to wed her himself; she can be certain she's not with child, she’s still on her moon’s blood, not that it ever stopped Gregor from bedding her. Or he will not, and she'll simply have to plead with him to let her stay here until she can contact her family. That thought is not so relieving as it might be, either. Fantasies of her grandfather coming to her rescue were one thing. Even if or when they do come to collect her, she'll be married off again by this time next year. Father didn't take long to know the character of her first husband. Why should he for the second? He'll find another landed knight or very petty lord to wed her to. 

Rhea is already wed to Martyn, and Sylva will likely never wed because she is blind. She knows Mother will be sympathetic, and Father may be abashed, having not realized how badly it went, this first attempt, but not for long. He will put her back on the market once the mourning period is over, and she’ll be packed off to another homely little keep in the Westerlands, the Reach, or northern Dorne. She wants to hope. She wants to believe the gods can’t hate her enough to give her two bad husbands in a row. But she doesn’t. 

Life here has never been good, but she knows the keep like the back of her hand, genuinely enjoys the village, and likes the land and the people who work it. If she could rid herself of Gregor’s men entirely and live here alone, managing the household, cooking and balancing the accounts and sewing and maybe even planting those seeds her grandmother gave her in the garden, she… she could be happy. But that isn’t going to happen. And she can’t simply refuse to tell her family she’s been widowed, either.

But there is no sense in fretting over those details right now, when so much depends on the brother and what he is like. She hopes he has some humor to him. Even if he is cruel- many men are cruel, seldom are they monsters. Some humor she could take. Some good nature she could appeal to, even if it is a sliver. She’s pretty, at least, she thinks she is. If he’s tolerable, if he seems like he would only hit her when she gave him cause, or like he might be a peaceable drunk, not an angry one, she could wed him. 

He’s young, too. So was Gregor, but there was no changing him. Fourteen is barely a man, not even of age. If she could win him over early on, she might be able to convince him to take a liking to her. That way, even if he does not want to wed her, he would still let her stay until her family can come for her. And if he took her to bed anyways, if he likes her, it won’t be so bad. 

“What’s Ser Sandor like?” she mutters to Jonna, as Gregor’s body is dragged outside by a team of men. They’ll bury him in the small lichyard with the rest of the Cleganes, in the hills behind the keep. If they can manage to get him that far. She’s inclined to see a hole dug on the side of the road, and him dumped in it, armor and all. 

“He’s no Ser,” Jonna’s response is to lick her lips nervously. “Not less he was knighted during the Sack. Might have been. He’s big.”

Mira’s heart drops. “How big?”

“Last I saw him, he was twelve years old and six feet tall. Maybe eleven stone or so. Big hands and feet. Big head, too.”

She groans quietly. “Has he got a temper?” That seems a stupid question. Of course he does. She’s never met a man who didn’t have a temper. Men are allowed their tempers, to tend to them like little lapdogs, stroking them and favoring and indulging them. Women’s tempers are made to be caught, caged, and skinned, then served up for dinner. A man’s temper is expected, even admired. A woman’s temper is wild and unruly and to be avoided at all costs.

“I’d say so.”

“How bad?” She needs to change into something black. Her only black gown is trimmed with cheery Clegane yellow. She’ll have to have to dye some other dresses. Dark colors will be expected for the next seven moons, although Gregor hasn’t set foot in a sept since he was knighted, unless there was wealth to steal or some poor holy woman to rape. 

“I don’t know,” Jonna says, helplessly. “He didn’t want to stay after Gregor came into his inheritance. He’s… you’ve heard about the burns.”

Of course Mira has heard. The burned brother, the dead sister and father and first wife. Rumors and whispers and pitying stares directed at her. In the tale of Gregor’s life, characters like her did not last long. She might have made it another year, with him. He didn’t like that she was not with child- in fact, her cycle never even skipped. Eventually he would have decided she was cheating him by way of moon tea, and deemed it excuse enough to kill her, if he didn’t find something else before then. 

She looked at him the wrong way. She prepared his meals the wrong way. She spoke the wrong way. Wrong wrong wrong. Was it difficult for him, being so right, so uncontested, so perfectly brutal? The world must have seemed an unpleasant place populated by tiny people with tiny concerns who lived tiny lives and died tiny deaths when he bashed their skulls in. Like a child playing with toys not up to par. She’s found toys, tucked away. Gregor and his brother’s, she supposes. Little wooden knights and animals, even an old doll that must have belonged to the sister, wrapped up in ragged, moth-eaten dresses made for a girl of six or seven. 

Mira wonders what she did wrong. Maybe she giggled the wrong way, or brushed her doll’s hair the wrong way, or sang to herself the wrong way.

The funeral is a very short affair. There isn’t even a proper service in the tiny sept. The village septon accompanies the household up into the hillocks, Gregor’s body is laid out on a sloppily constructed wooden bier, which itself groans quietly under his weight during the short, simple sermon. There is not much to reflect on. The air of relief is palpable. Ordinarily he would be buried in his armor, but the gravedigger is a frail old man and Mira thinks it would take a week to dig a hole big enough to bury Gregor in like this. 

They light the bier instead- she does, eyes watering as she sets the torch to the tinder. It goes up quickly, smoke billowing downhill, carried by the warm summer wind. She doesn’t wait around to watch him burn, only has his armor brought back down. The brother will want it, or maybe she can sell it for a good price. The helm, at least, that might be melted down by a smith so he can reforge it into something else. The rest of the armor is too big for any ordinary knight to want or wear. 

The solution of what to do with the rowdy garrison is simple enough. A week later she chooses the captain she hates the most, urges him to pick the men she thinks most threatening to her person, and implores them to form an honor guard and ride for King’s Landing immediately, to convey the news of Ser Gregor’s death to his young brother in person, while she, his tender-hearted widow, attends to the affairs of the household in their absence. It takes some prodding; they’ve been back from King’s Landing for less than a month and are in no mood to ride east again, but when she suggests they might be able to stay for the wedding of King Robert to the Lady Cersei, they are suddenly much more eager, knowing it will be a riotous, joyful affair. Or as joyful as you can call a wedding, when the city around it is still in ruins. 

She sends her letters, one to the Red Keep, where she assumes Sandor Clegane is still stationed, one to Oldtown on the odd chance that her family is home and not on the road, and one to the house on the Tor, although with the Mander and the mountains between them and her she knows it will be weeks before she hears back from anyone. But with less men around the keep she feels a little more secure, even if it is all only temporary. 

At least she can rise when she likes, goes to bed alone every night, comfortably tired, not dreading the next day. She spends most of her time in the kitchens, the sunniest part of the dingy keep, or in the garden just outside, looking at the bare-roots and seeds she brought here nearly a year ago. The seeds will take a long time to grow, depending on how long of a summer this is. If it’s only a year or so, they may not produce grapes at all. She wants a trellis built too, and asking Sam and Jace to help her with it is on the tip of her tongue, she even takes out the gardening shovels from one of the sheds a few times, but can’t bring herself to break ground.

Mira blames it on the dry period they are going through; there hasn’t been rain in five weeks- but she knows it’s because she’s afraid. She’s just as afraid to put down any roots as she was after her first fortnight of marriage. What if he comes back and ruins it? She can’t bear to see it torn away from her like that, and she shouldn’t be getting attached to the idea in the first place. This isn’t her home. It has never been her home. 

But in the meantime, she sweeps and scrubs and tears down all the drapes. Not just in her room, but every room. They’re old and mildewed and moth-eaten anyways, and she doesn’t care if the sunlight discolors the furniture. It would be an improvement, in her opinion. She leaves the windows open as much as possible, and gets up on a ladder with Lenore and Jonna to scrub the narrow, high slits of windows in the dining hall, even, if only to make the space slightly brighter. 

Most of Gregor’s clothing she burns. His brother hasn’t lived here in over two years and wouldn’t know what was in his wardrobe anyways. The only thing she keeps are some belts, one finely detailed jerkin, and some good boots that might sell for a fair price, even if they’d be very big on most men. Gregor kept no books nor correspondence. He could read and write; she’s seen him do both. He wasn’t stupid. He didn’t even mouth along the words the way her sister Rhea does. He wasn’t clever, either. He just… was. 

He had no real personal items, either. No prayer beads or trinkets or lucky charms. One sturdy hunting knife and a few ornate feasting knives he pilfered from somewhere. The gold he brought back with him from King’s Landing is in a coffer buried behind the kennel. He was paranoid about his men stealing from him, she’ll give him that, and she would have been too, in his position. He’d barely had the chance to spend any of it, and if he had, he would have spent it on ale and beer and whores, or the occasional bet or wager on a horse race or a tavern fist-fight. His needs were not very complicated. She’s not touching the buried coin for now. It’s not worth her neck. Men go half-mad if they suspect even for an instant you’ve cheated or stolen from them. They’d throttle their own children over it. 

She has some of her money. Not enough to get her any further than Old Oak. That’s not even halfway to Oldtown, never mind the Tor, and booking passage on a decent ship that’s not like to sell you into slavery is expensive. Even if she made it to Old Oak, she’d only have enough left for perhaps a week’s stay in good lodging. She’s got no trade of her own and nothing to sell unless she managed to bring some of the wine with her, and that would run out quickly. Then she’d be reduced to wandering the docks in a ragged dress, plying herself for passing sailors just so she didn’t end up sleeping in the gutter. 

Mira doesn’t like her choices, but that’s nothing new. At least she has them right now, even if they’re bad ones. There was no choosing with Gregor.

She sent thirty men to King’s Landing; it’d take them near ten weeks, even making good time on good roads. Her letter will have reached the city in only a few days, though.

Six weeks later Sandor Clegane rides up the village road. She’s not stupid; in order to make that good sort of time he would have had to set off, alone, as soon he got word of his brother’s death. She has no idea what he did with the men sent for him, if he even waited for them at all, or just galloped past them on the road. The sight would be almost funny, if it weren’t so alarming that he is here already. 

She’s not ready. It’s not even been three moons. She’s only had word back from her grandparents; their condolences, and the last they heard her mother and father were sailing out to the Arbor for talks of a potential deal with a noble vineyard there. They’re probably about to be cheated, but they’ll put up with it because you can’t tell a lord he’s cheating you to his face, that’s how you lose the tip of your tongue or nose. 

It’s an odd time of day, too, late afternoon. She should be starting on dinner but she can’t be in the kitchen hunched over a pot with flour on her hands and face when her husband’s brother comes in, so instead Mira takes the stairs two steps at a time to run up and change into her finest black gown, which is not so very fine at all, too short in the sleeves. She wasn’t done growing when it was made for her, she was only thirteen. 

She changes her shoes, too, from her dirty boots to a softer pair of slippers, and combs through her hair with her fingers, examines her reflection in the looking glass. Smile, but don’t smile too much. Speak softly but not so soft that you annoy him. Don’t speak unless he addresses you. Don’t ever walk in front of him, or turn your back on him. Don’t leave the room until he dismisses you. These are lessons she had to learn with Gregor. She won’t make the same mistakes this time. She’s older and wiser now, fourteen, not a little child anymore but a woman grown. 

She hurries back downstairs and into the receiving chamber in time to hear the gates opening, the dogs in the kennel beginning to bark. Gods, she hopes that gate is latched. Some men like their dogs running out to greet them, but Gregor hated it, was more like to kick them away, cursing at their exuberance, then give a pat on the head or a scratch behind the ears. He was never very fond of his house’s sigil. She supposes perhaps men mocked him for it behind his back, although they’d have to be very brave or stupid men to risk him hearing. 

“Lenore, please bring in some wine,” she says under her breath, as she hears footfall, and then adds, quickly, “a white one. And water, too, with some salted bread and olives.” She was taught to always serve a white wine before dinner, never a heavy one. If he doesn’t want it, she’ll give him water. She wants to delay him drinking as much as possible until she has some sense of him, if he’s quaffing mead right away she’ll be on pins and needles all night. 

Sam and Jace escort him in, although it’s difficult to really call it that when they’re both little green boys of twelve or so, half his size. Gods, he is big. She has the similar sensation of dread that she had when they were calling for the bedding at her wedding, as Gregor pushed away from the table, his men crowding around her, jeering and shouting. He’s a little leaner than his brother, this Sandor, but most of that is age, he still has years of growing to do. The thought is terrifying. One half of his face is that of a boy’s, thin and sharp-featured; he has lighter eyes but a bigger nose than Gregor, and darker eyebrows, his hair closer to true black than dark brown. What hair he has is thin and long, nearly to his shoulders, although not matted, he does comb it, she sees. Combs it to the left, to be exact, to try to hide some of the scarring.

It doesn’t work. When he comes into the light she draws back involuntarily. She’s seen burn scars before, but never this bad. The flesh isn’t white or pink, it’s black and pockmarked, full of open cracks that look ready to bleed or ooze pus at any moment. You can even see part of his jawbone, the white of it jarring against the ruined flesh. He has no left ear, just a hole, and half his lips are gone, too, permanently gnarled and contorted. When he moves his mouth you can see the scar tissue pulsing and twitching. He’s not as tall as Gregor, but he’s got to be six foot four, at least, nearly a foot taller than she, and while he is slightly thinner than Gregor was, he is still very well-muscled, and she can tell he’s still growing into his shoulders and long limbs.

Lenore comes back in with the wine and bread and salt, ducking her head in recognition. “Ser,” she mumbles, out of habit.

He all but snarls wordlessly in response. Mira’s heart claws its way into her throat.

“M’not a Ser.” Hearing a boy’s voice, thin and hoarse, from that face, is very disconcerting.

“Of course, Ser- Master,” Lenore babbles, setting the tray down with shaking hands. “I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.” She sends Mira a frantic look. Gregor would hit for less. 

“I’m pleased to see you well, Master Sandor,” Mira forces herself to speak again, hating how shrill and young she sounds, after weeks of becoming accustomed to her own comfortable silence. “I… I know the roads in the Crownlands are not always safe, especially… now.” Thousands fled the city or were forced out, and they say bandits have set up camp from Tumbleton to Rosby. “Did you… did the men I sent reach you, after my letter?”

He stares at her for a moment, gaze hard and inscrutable. “Yes,” he says, shortly. 

“Are they… are they coming back?” she asks.

“No,” he says, then, challenging, “Hoping they might?”

She lowers her gaze immediately. “No, Ser- Master,” she corrects herself, infuriated with herself for already mucking this up. “Master Sandor. No. I... they are your men now. As I said in my letter, I am Mira Vintner by birth, I-”

“There’s no House Vintner around here,” he sounds suspicious, as if already convinced she is hiding something from him.

“I’m not a lady,” she says. “My… my father is Andrey Vintner. We’re winesellers.” As if it wasn't obvious by the name. 

“That makes sense,” he barks a humorless laugh. “How many bottles were in your dowry?”

“Fifty.” Still to the floor. He’s noticed by now.

“What, afraid to look?” That has a decidedly mocking edge. Gregor could be mocking, when he wanted to put in the effort to drag things out a little, before he got on with whatever he’d decided to do to her. 

Mira looks up, because she doesn’t want him to decide he should make her, stares blankly at his face. If she just focuses on it as a blurry shape, it’s not so bad. “No. I’m sorry.”

He snorts. “Your family coming for you?”

Her blood runs cold. “I… I’ve written them.” Then, feeling she should get this out of the way now, “I’m not with child. Maester Andon’s inspected me.”

“You think I care whether he got a whelp on you?” he snaps. 

She fights not to look away or flinch. “No. I’m sorry.”

Her apologies do not do much to endear her to him, she can tell. He sits down with a grunt; she imagines he must be exhausted after hours of hard riding today. His armor is plain and dark grey, verging on black. His helm is sat on the table by the door; it looks brand new, he must have just had it commissioned. Unlike Gregor’s fist, it’s a dog’s head. Maybe he likes them, dogs. That’s good. She likes dogs too, when they’re well-behaved. At the house in Oldtown they just have three cats. 

She tells herself their names while he eats and drinks, not moving from her position by the doorway, hands folded in front of her. Winter, Berry, and Moon Lady. Winter is snow white, Berry is an orange tabby, and Moon Lady is white and grey. Damon named them, he loves animals. If Sandor marries her, her father will send Damon to them. That might not be so bad. Most men can abide peacefully enough with their squires, they don’t irk them the way their wives or daughters do. 

Finally he glances over at her, as if surprised to see her still standing there. “Do you want something?” He doesn’t sound angry, exactly, but he doesn’t seem pleased at all with her presence, either. He probably hated Gregor as much as her, and doesn’t like seeing Gregor's lowborn wife around at all. 

“I’ll see to your dinner,” she blurts out, and leaves before he can think of a reason to make her stay. 

Once safely in the kitchen, she takes several deep breaths. “Was he awful?” Jonna whispers, daring to speak no louder than that, as noisy as it is with pots and pans clattering.

“No,” Mira says, tightly. “He’s fine. Hungry.” 

They have smoked ham and vegetable broth. Stone soup, the smallfolk call it, the most barebones of meals, but she wasn’t expecting him to be here by tonight, and she didn’t have time to plan a better menu, and hopefully he’s so used to soldier’s rations that he won’t care. She poaches an egg and adds it to his bowl, just to sweeten the pot a little. 

Mira carries most of it out herself, with help from Sam, and does not dare sit down until he’s started eating. He keeps looking at her with his left eye, peering grotesquely out of the ruined side of his face. Because that is the ruined side, there is no expression for her to read beyond his eye, which just looks accusatory. “We have more bread,” she says, to fill the empty space, although she kicks herself for it. This is what got her into trouble with Gregor, always. Her mouth. She shouldn’t speak out of turn, but she’s careless from the brief reprieve of having no man of the house to answer to. “If you- if you’re still hungry.”

“You’re not going to eat?” he demands, then looks a little dubious- what, does he think she’s poisoned it? 

Mira sits down in a hurry, ladling some of her own broth and picking two slices of ham, keeping her eyes on her plate all the while. She doesn’t dare touch any of the wine in front him, although he’s had two cups. If he’s feeling it, he doesn’t show any signs of it. 

“Who’s the cook now?” he asks brusquely after a few minutes of silence beyond chewing and the clatter of forks. “It was Rye when I- when I was a boy.” When I was a boy. He’s still a boy. But she can’t think like that, it will get her into trouble. Gregor was a boy too, when he was killing the princess and her babies. 

“We don’t… we don’t have one, exactly,” she says, “I- I do a good deal of it, me and Lenore and Jonna and sometimes Sam, he helps too. Or… or Hemma, from the village, and her sister Alla, they sometimes come up to help us when we have to get a good deal of cooking or baking done. It’s been… well, with less men to feed-,”

“You shouldn’t have halved the garrison to send men to fetch me,” he cuts her off, cold and flat.

Mira freezes, her fork in mid-air, then sits it down. “I’m sorry.”

“It was stupid,” he continues. “You think no one’s heard the news that he’s dead? You could have had the keep taken out from under you in the mean time.”

“You’re right,” she murmurs. “I... it was stupid of me to risk that. I’m sorry.”

“Stop apologizing,” he snaps. “What, my brother didn’t have the time to beat that out of you?” He sounds infuriated; she doesn’t know if it’s with her, himself, or his dead brother.

Mira does not say a word, just stays very, very still, ready to throw herself under the table to evade his fists at a moment’s notice. He’s silent, too, then reaches to pour himself more wine. “Go to bed,” he says, as if it’s just occurred to him to tell her that. Mira nods, silently, then jumps up and clears the table in silence, too, watching the wine glug into his cup out of the corner of her eye. 

Once in her bedroom, she changes into her plain summer shift; it used to have ribbon lacing along the collar, but Gregor ripped that out, it annoyed him to feel it under his rough hands. Then she considers the door, and bars it and pushes her chair up against it for good measure. She doesn’t doubt he could still break it down. But no one hammers on her door that night.

It did not take Mira long to get the measure of Gregor; by the end of their first week of marriage together, she knew more or less what to expect, and her only thought was to pray that the Westerlands would enter the war soon, very soon, so she might be free of him for a time. 

By the end of the first week of Sandor’s return, she still does not know what to expect. He does not behave as she’d thought he might based on their first dinner together. Despite the small size of the keep, and the large size of him, she rarely sees him, except at meals. His first order of business is to round up what remains of the garrison and sort through them; Mira watches dubiously from a tower window, hoping he does not happen to glance up and see her spying on him, as Sandor sends man after man packing from the keep, all on foot. Separate the wheat from the chaff, she supposes. He wants men loyal to him, not his brother’s shade. 

But the men he sends away were the worst of the lot who were left. The drunkards, the lechers, the cravens content to hide behind Gregor’s might. The men he has left, and the men he roots out from their lands, small though they might be, are a more decent sort. Young, most of them not much older than him, but he has found himself sixty fresh men within a fortnight. Sandor spends most of his time with them, patrolling their borders or setting the guard house to order; he forbids her from letting men come into the kitchen looking for drink, and will not permit them to mistreat Sam and Jace and the other boys working the stables and the kitchens. 

That's not to say he is some gentle Florian, speaking sweetly to her and the other women of the household or spreading alms among the poor. He’s got a temper to rival Gregor’s and the first time she hears him shout she nearly jumps out of her skin, heart pounding in her chest. He’s nicer to his horse, a young black courser named after the Stranger. Holt the groom claims the horse only a year old, if that, but he’s already huge, with a temper to match his master’s. He’ll bite, kick, or charge anyone not Sandor, and Mira is glad she has no cause to enter the stables. She never learned how to ride anything larger than a mule.

In an effort to stay well out of the way of both the horse and the master, she spends more time than she ever has before in the village, but all they want to know is what the new Master Clegane is like, and if he is ever going to be knighted, and if she is going to wed him, and whether he will allot supplies from the keep for repairs, or if their yearly taxes and tribute might be lessened due to many of the men leaving for war during the planting season, and if he is on good terms with the Lannisters and whether he means to make a life at court for himself and leave them be. 

The sept has developed a fresh hole in the roof, and when a summer storm rolls in from the coast three weeks after Sandor’s return, it floods and reeks of water-logged wood. Despite her nerves, Mira takes pity on Septon Edwyn and agrees to approach Gregor’s brother with him. She doesn’t trust him, but she doesn’t hate him yet, either; he’s done nothing to give her real cause to go in fear of him; she spilled some of his dinner two nights prior and he did not give her the back of his hand or bellow at her in rage, only snapped at her when she spent too long on the floor trying to clean the spill herself. 

Septon Edwyn is short, swarthy, and bearded; from a distance he looks much older than twenty or so. But he is very anxious even as she escorts him into the hall, brushing dust from the road off his grey robes. The hall has no high seat as a lord might sit, just a large chair with carved wooden dogs along the arm rests, so hands cradle the top of their snarling muzzles. 

Sandor has yet to sit it easily; Gregor would sometimes lounge in it, almost, in rare, languid moments, and once had a whore while sitting it, but the brother sits on the edge as if it were too small for him, although it is probably the only piece of furniture in this place that isn’t.

He keeps a straight face while Edwyn delivers his request; to tear down the sept and rebuild a new one. Men from the garrison will have to be volunteered, and the keep’s smith, Randon, will have to be made use of, hopefully for a lesser fee than normal, since the village can’t go without a place to pray for long. 

“Did you hold my brother’s funeral?” he interrupts, at one point.

Edwyn pauses, throat bobbing under his beard. “Yes.”

“And is he with the Seven now?” The sarcasm is hard to miss. 

“I should think so, Master Clegane.”

The unscarred half of his lips curl into a sneer. “Aye, smashing the Father’s skull and fucking the Mother, he would be.”

Mira gasps involuntarily at his blasphemy; naming his mount Stranger is one thing, but to mock the gods in such a way is another. Edwyn seems to be struggling for words, torn between furious faith and general fear of a Clegane.

“Forgive my goodbrother, Septon,” she says quickly. “He didn’t mean to give offense. War can twist a man’s tongue. We must pray he comes to know the Father’s comfort soon.” Mira thinks that is the most she has ever said at once in either man’s presence. 

Edwyn looks at her with a mixture of relief that she interceded and pity, and she understands the pity a moment later when Sandor orders him out. She makes to follow, but hasn’t gone more than foot before he snaps, “Not you.”

Mira turns back. He’s come down from the chair. He is so very big. She’d grown used to Gregor’s size, but his still stuns her, maybe because he is young, still, not even of age, not that it matters in times like these. 

“Pretty words,” he says. “Did you have more for my brother, while they buried him beside my father? Going to pray for my soul, as you did his?” When he realizes she is steadily gazing at the floor, he rasps furiously, “Look at me! You were brave enough with the septon at your side, but now you’re a little rabbit again, is that it?”

She looks at him. If he is going to strike her, he is going to strike her, and there is nothing she can do about it. The more quiet she stays, the angrier he gets; his fists are grasping at nothing at his sides, and his shoulders are trembling, big and broad as they are. 

“I laughed when your brother died,” she says, feeling she has little to lose. “I laughed and drank his wine.” She swallows. “My wine.” He doesn’t inherit her dowry through Gregor, not unless he weds her himself. 

He stares at her for a moment, his grey eyes chips of stone in his ruined face, and instead of moving towards her or ordering her out, leaves the hall himself, his footfall echoing heavily on the floors. 

She finally receives word from her father the next day, from the Straits. They are returning to Oldtown, and her father will write Sandor directly to inquire as to how they might best proceed with a second match between the Vintners and the Cleganes. In the mean time, she is to act as the mistress of the household and win his respect and affection if she can. If he is agreeable, Damon might come to them after the wedding, which of course can not be held for months yet, but he has no reason to refuse them.

Mira thinks he has plenty of reason to refuse them. There's no political alliance or peace that must be kept by him wedding her, and if he's knighted within the next few years, he will find someone willing to marry into the Cleganes, even if they are no high lord’s daughter. Just because he doesn't want to hurt her doesn’t mean he likes her in the least. In fact, she thinks the very sight of her irritates him.

She says nothing of the letter to Sandor, although she knows Andon may tell him regardless, if he’s sober enough to remember it. Instead she decides she needs tell him where Gregor kept his gold, for he must be wondering by now. She knows she should have done so right away, but she could not bring herself to seek him out, and she never wanted to interrupt him while he was eating dinner, and then he was gone all the time, anyways. 

When she knocks on the solar door, for a long moment there is silence, and then she hears a muffled grunt bidding her to enter. He looks surprised to see her, since they have not exchanged any words at all beyond him thanking her under his breath, in his sullen, boyish way, for refilling his cup without being asked at dinner the night before. Mira does not dare come much further than the doorway; the small room is sparse and dim, even without curtains on the windows. “Did you take them down?” he asks, as if he’d just read her mind, gesturing at the morning light coming in.

“Yes,” Mira admits. “They were moth-eaten.” It’s not strictly true, but he doesn’t need to know.

“Why haven’t you ordered new ones?” He doesn’t sound angry, to her surprise, more… disgruntled, if anything.

“I… you’ve not given me any allowance,” she finally says. “I’ve my own coin passed to me from my parents before I wed, but if I used it every time we needed something for the household, there’d be none left.”

He looks taken aback. She realizes he genuinely had not considered this. “How often did- did my brother give you coin? For these things?” he asks gruffly.

Mira considers. “Only once or twice in all. We weren’t even married a year, so-,” She dipped into the money left behind without permission while he was gone, when Andon was running low on supplies that could not be gathered naturally, but Gregor never had the time to find out. 

He scowls. “That can’t be right.” He has a good grasp of sums, she’s seen him go over the accounts at least once, probably wondering where in the seven hells the loot from the Sack is. 

“He was… remiss in it,” she suggests. “Monthly. That’s the custom.” She exhales. The law grants her a widow’s allowance from her husband’s surviving kin. “But you should- you should know that the coin your brother brought back from King’s Landing, most of it is buried. Behind the kennel. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you earlier, Master Clegane.”

“Sandor,” he says. Mira blinks, squeezing her hands together before her. “Just call me Sandor. Not your master. Not anyone’s master.” 

He wants her to show him exactly where it’s buried, but he doesn’t seem angry, only… uneasy, almost, as if they were digging up bones instead of gold. Mira directs him to the spot and waits for him to get Sam or Jace to dig for him, but instead he goes into the garden shed himself and comes out with a spade far too small for his big hands. Mira watches as he starts to dig, the soft dirt parting easily, and does not breath easily until he’s lifted out the chest and opened it up, smashing off the lock with the shovel. She’s not sure what she expects him to do- count it?- but he snaps the lid shut almost as soon as he’d opened it, as if confronted with a severed head and not a decent amount of coin, enough to comfortably see them through the summer, at least. 

See him through. There’s no guarantee that she will be here when autumn comes. 

Mira waits to be dismissed, shifting from foot to foot, feeling the sun beat down on the back of her neck, but then he says, “Those seeds, in the shed- what are they for? Never seen them before.”

“Vines,” she says, surprised, then, “You know, for grapes. To grow.”

He looks like he’d never considered how wine was made before, but that’s not very kind of her. She doesn't now him well, and doesn't expect to ever know him well, but she knows by now that he’s not stupid. He’s cleverer than most boys- men- his age, she’d reckon, he’s just good at hiding it. She doesn’t imagine the Lannisters are seeking out the best and brightest to hack and slash through enemy territory and break down doors and kill princesses. Soldiers aren’t supposed to be smart, they’re supposed to obey. Brains are for the lord commanders.

“Was that part of your dowry too?”

She thinks he’s mocking her again, for a moment, but the look in his dark eyes isn’t as hateful as it could be, nor as smugly malicious. Mira shrugs, although she immediately chides herself for it- men hate it when women shrug at them, or don’t give a straight answer. Gregor once clouted her hard enough to make her left ear ring for days when she was slow to reply to his question. Not that he ever made a habit of asking her very many questions. 

“Why didn’t you plant them?”

“Can’t do it now,” she hedges. “The bareroots, maybe, in pots, but the seeds should have gone in the ground very early spring.” She swallows, then admits, “I was going to ask for a trellis to be built, but… it never seemed like the right time.”

For the first time she feels that he understands what she is trying to say perfectly, without becoming incensed or infuriated with her, without making her feel small and stupid. 

He nods, then goes to the put the shovel away, and Jonna calls for her from the kitchen garden, so she leaves without fear of offending him.

Sandor approves the request to rebuild the sept. Mira busies herself with overseeing that, mostly making sure everyone is fed and sheltered from the heat of the sun, and brings down some of her wine for the workers every day at dusk. She likes to sit in the long grass in the shadow of the towerhouse, listening to the wind rustle through the trees and the children at play nearby. People go around with more ease now that he is dead, stay out longer, don’t keep themselves tucked away in their little houses. And the dogs are barking in the distance for their dinner. They never dared bark like that when Gregor lived.

Of course it can’t last. A fortnight later a raven finally arrives from Oldtown, her father. Maester Andon gives Sandor this letter before she has a chance to look it over, and he barges into the kitchen where she is kneading out dough to bake bread. Hemma lets out a little involuntary squeal at the sight of him; she can hardly help it, but Sandor stays in the doorway, well clear of any of the numerous fires. Mira’s not surprised that he’s cautious of them, after his burns, but she is surprised that he has always refused one lit in his room, even when the nights are cooler than usual. Maybe he really is afraid, not just wary around an open flame. 

She’d never really considered the possibility of a Clegane being afraid of anything. Gregor wasn’t, until the very end. 

Mira wipes her hands off on her smock, tugs it off and hangs it on the usual peg, and silently follows him upstairs. He seems almost surprised by her obedience, but by now she is, at least, not afraid he is going to hurt her on a whim or impulse or because she made him angry. He might shout at her, but she’s used to that, she grew up in a family full of shouters, and her father curses enough to land himself a reserved seat in the first or second hell, at least. 

To her surprise, he lets her read the letter before he says anything. She thought he’d just yell, or accuse her of trying to claw her way into his family once again. 

“Your father wants me to wed you,” he says, when she’s set it back down on the table. “And take your brother as a squire. He thinks I’m a knight.”

“He thinks you’ll be a knight,” Mira corrects, and this time doesn’t chide herself for speaking out of turn. He made it clear he wanted to speak, and so far he’s kept his tone even enough, raspy as it is by nature. 

“I won’t,” he says, churlishly. Boyishly, really. “I’ll never be a knight.”

“Then people will mock you,” she replies, brow furrowed. “You’ll have lands but no title. You’ll bring the family name back down to the gentry, until your son or grandson is knighted.”

“What makes you think I want a son?” he snaps.

“Most men want sons.”

“And most women want a babe at their breast and another in their belly, is that it?”

She blinks at him. “Which women do you know?”

He reddens, or at least the unscarred side of his face does. “Don’t avoid the question-,” he seems unsure if he wants to call her ‘Mira’ or ‘woman’ or maybe something worse, although he’s never sworn at her, just around her, never called her any names. 

“Are you asking me to marry you?” She’s not teasing, she doesn’t trust him enough to tease anymore than she would trust a wild dog enough to tease it without expecting to lose a few fingers. She’s genuinely confused. What does he want her to say? To do? Beg him not to wed her? Beg him to wed her? Cry? Tell him to send her home to her family?

His nostrils flare. It reminds her of his horse. “I’m asking you what you want. Don’t play stupid with me.”

Why do you care what I want, she thinks, and it is not borne of bitterness but unusual curiosity. Father didn’t ask her what she wanted before he promised her to Gregor. 

He said, “Here’s the thing, he wanted Rhea, see, but she’s already gone and wed Martyn, and I won’t be shamed for it, he’s got the head for numbers and he’ll be a fine seller one day. You’re flowered, your hips have come in, and three-and-ten is near grown enough, and the man’s not much older, Mira. He looks big and mean, so he does, but you could do far worse, my girl. You’re a cheery one, might be you’ll break that stone in half, reveal the green boy underneath it, yeah? Well, don’t cry now, your aunts are already working on your gown, and you’ll have a proper ceremony in a good city sept. Might be we’ll visit from time to time, once you’re settled in. And you can always write. Dry your eyes, there’s a good girl. Shoulders back, chest out- there you go. Smile for me. See? Like I said to him, perfect teeth. Rhea’s a beauty, no doubt, but the girl’s teeth are crooked as your granddad’s back.”

Mira scrutinizes him for a moment, weighing the two in her mind. Her father’s casual disregard, easy assurances, and her goodbrother’s black pit of anger, his scars, his boyish honesty. 

“I want to see my family again,” she says, louder and clear than she thought she would. “But I want to stay here. If you’ll have me for a wife. I like it here.”

His eyes narrow. “You like it here?”

“I like the people,” she says. “I like the earth. I like the sunshine.”

“You’d marry me?” He doesn’t sound furious, to her surprise, just incredulous. “You don’t know me. I could be as bad as him.”

“You’re not.”

He scowls. “You don’t know that.”

“I do.”

“You don’t!” He slams a fist down on the table, and there is a cracking of wood gone to splinters. 

Mira blinks, and rubs at her chin. Her hands still smell like flour. “If you were as bad as him,” she says, more patiently than she feels, “You’d have hurt me already. He never waited around for it. Or you’d have thrown me out with nothing but the clothes on my back. It’s been weeks. You haven’t. You stomp around and shout and eat the food I make, but you haven’t raised a hand to me.” She feels a little bolder now, a little bigger. “How come you haven’t?”

He stares, the scarred side grotesque, the boy’s side stricken with something like fear or shame. She wonders why this would shame him. She’s paying him a compliment. He’s not his brother. He’s better than his brother. And it might be he’s better than her father, too.

He clears his throat, then says, “They never should have wed you to him. Did they want you dead? Everyone knows what he is. What he was. They know.” He sounds angry about that, too. There are powerful men that could have put Gregor down, from Crakehall to Golden Grove. But why would they, Mira thinks. Then they’d have to bloody their hands when it comes time to sack cities, not just look on proudly from atop their warhorses. Everyone wants the best cut of tender meat, her grandmother would say, but no one wants to be the butcher.

“They didn’t know,” she says. “We met him near Red Lake. We were selling wine in a town. My sisters and I were dancing in the tavern with our cousins. He saw Rhea. My eldest sister.” She swallows. “He liked the look of her, but she was already wed. He didn’t like that, but my father offered me instead, once he realized he was a knight, with lands of his own. That’s what everyone wants. Rhea’s husband Martyn will be a merchant like my father and grandfather. And Damon will be our knight, and he’ll earn lands of our own, and we’ll be House Vintner.” She smiles bitterly. “With a castle and serfs and words of our own.”

“How long were you betrothed?” he rasps.

Mira’s smile dies. “A week, give or take. My mother wanted to wait, but Father was afraid he’d lose interest. He thought it might be our only chance. My other sister, Sylva, she’s blind. They don’t think she’ll ever marry.”

Now the only sound between them is the breeze rattling at the curtainless windowpanes. They need to be washed again.

“You don’t want to wed me,” he says. “You just don’t want to go back to them.”

“I want to see the Torr again,” she says. “I want to see my grandparents and my cousins and the vineyard. But I don’t think I can go home again… knowing I’ll have to leave and wed some other knight or lord. Who I don't know. Who I can't trust.”

She watches the apple bob in his leathery throat. He nods. 

“Thank you for… for listening,” she ventures. “It was kind of you.”

“M’not kind,” he snaps, although it’s muffled with embarrassment. 

“Kinder than most,” she says.

“Than most are full of shit.”

Mira exhales in amusement, and for the first time feels genuinely comfortable, not cautious, in his presence.

He writes back to her father and takes dinner in the solar, like a proper busy lord might, not a boy of fourteen who refuses to be a squire or a knight or anything other than what he is. She’s surprised but not shocked when he asks her to stay. They eat off the same tray, and he refuses the wine, drinking water instead. The room grows very dark, and eventually she quietly asks if she can light the hearth. After some hesitation, he agrees. 

When he’s finished, he hands her the letter. Mira keeps it folded in her hand, turning on her heel to take it to Maester Andon, but then he says, “Read it.”

She does, eyes widening a little, before her gaze darts up at him. The shadows blur his face; the scarring melds seamlessly into the smooth skin, and he seems not hateful but uncertain, tentative. 

Mira holds the warm parchment in her hand, then nods, jerkily. After a moment, he inclines his head back to her.

Two moons later she orders curtains in Oldtown, and airs out her old bedchamber as the household packs in efficient chaos for the trip down the coast and up the Torr. Rhea thinks she might be with child and is arguing with Martyn over names, Father is in a state over the latest guild feud, and Mother is trying to wrangle Damon and his new puppy, whom he is calling Sandor, for Mira brought it back with her from the latest litter at Clegane Hall. If there is one thing that runs in their blood, it is breeding the finest hounds she has ever seen, with velvet soft fur and inquisitive dark eyes. 

Sylva sits on Mira’s bed, legs folded beneath her, Moon Lady curled up in her lap. 

“You’re not disappointed?” she says. “That he sent you away until the mourning period’s over? What if he weds another while you’re gone?”

Mira just laughs. 

“You barely know one another,” Sylva frowns, angling her face towards the window so she can feel the sunlight on her skin.

“I know enough of him,” Mira says. “He promised to plant some vines while I was gone. What do you have to say about that, Sylvie?”

Sylva arches a dark eyebrow, scratching Moon Lady under her white chin. “I’d say it’s a rare sight to see a knight do his own gardening.” Her lips quirk up into a smile. “Rarer still for me.”

Mira huffs, flopping onto the bed beside her. “He’s not a knight. But very funny.”

“I am,” Sylva hums, hand finding Mira’s hair to stroke it back from her scalp. “Will you write to him? When we’re at Grandfather’s house?”

“I think so,” Mira says. “I’ll have to give him instructions, won’t I? Can’t have him drowning our first crop of grapes.”

Sylva leans down and kisses her brow. “So long as you’re happy with him.”

“I think I will be. Happier than most, anyways.”

Their mother is calling them down for dinner; Mira can smell the roast from here, wafting up from the kitchens. She gets up, grasping Sylva’s hand and helping her down from the bed, Moon Lady prowling ahead. 

“Father’s pleased to not have to pay a brand new dowry,” Sylva notes.

Mira says nothing, and when her wrist clicks as she guides her sister, blinks back happy tears when Sylva squeezes her hand and rests her head momentarily on her shoulder, smelling of fresh baked bread and peaches and pomegranates

**Author's Note:**

> Some Notes:
> 
> 1\. I wrote this like 3 weeks ago at this point but I was sitting on it a while because it needed edits. This is my penance for not being able to update Haunt/Hunt this weekend.
> 
> 2\. Mira is an OC, she's supposed to stand in for Gregor's second wife. Who canonically died. But this is a kinder world where a boar gores the shit out of Gregor before he ever gets to enjoy the rewards of being Tywin's butcher. 
> 
> 3\. I made Mira of the merchant class out of a desire to write someone from a non-noble background, although she is still educated and grew up fairly wealthy, compared to the vast majority of the smallfolk. However her family does not have the rights and protections of the aristocracy, and their wealth is both new and tenuous. Vintner literally means winemaker, like Smith or Baker (or Spicer, like Jeyne Westerling's mother in canon). 
> 
> 4\. Mira and Sandor are both around 14 years old during this fic. I wanted a contrast between a child bride and a child soldier, although this fic ended up being mostly about Mira's trauma, less about Sandor's. Maybe if I ever follow this up someday, we'll get his side of the story. This fic takes place in 284 AC or thereabouts, during the aftermath of Robert's Rebellion, hence the reference to Robert and Cersei getting married in King's Landing.
> 
> 5\. The Cleganes should really have more staff and an actual cook, but Gregor's a shitty boss and trained stewards/castellans/chefs are unwilling to come work for someone already building up a nasty reputation at age 17. (Yes, Gregor Clegane was only about 17 years old during the Sack of King's Landing. He was a teenage boy, which I think adds to the horror of the whole thing. This is the sort of person who Tywin's politics and power prop up.)
> 
> 6\. Mira's mother's side of the family are 'Sandy Dornishmen', and her father is from Oldtown. He took on her mother's family name when he married her in order to join the burgeoning family business. Mira's father's greatest aspiration is to propel his own children into the nobility through whatever means possible. This sees Mira married off at 13 to a young knight her parents only just met. In order for their family to climb up the ranks of society, people like Mira pay the price in terrible ways in Westeros.
> 
> 7\. Mira's wrist clicks and hurts randomly because it was badly broken by Gregor in a rage and not set properly. She doesn't know how to ride a horse because girls of her social class aren't usually taught that. She was probably educated by her aunts, instead of an expensive septa. She had an unusual childhood in terms of the constant travel, and growing up in the Reach, the Westerlands, and Dorne, instead of just one small area. The Torrentine is the river in Dorne that the island of Starfall sits in the middle of. 
> 
> 8\. Her eldest sister Rhea is dyslexic, which is why she struggles with her reading, and her middle sister Sylva is blind from a childhood illness (possibly meningitis or something along those lines). Her little brother Damon is planned to become a squire by their father, as he thinks Damon can elevate the family if he's awarded lands as a knight. Everything Mira cooks in this chapter is a reference to Italian cuisine because that's the aesthetic I go for when visualizing the Westerlands.
> 
> 9\. As always you can find me on tumblr at [dwellordream](https://dwellordream.tumblr.com/).


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